Dog-Man Isomorphism: Gaze Companion Species with Empathy in Disgrace

  • Yongjin Wu Hunan Normal University
Keywords: Coetzee, Disgrace, corpus, AntConc, Dog-man, Isomorphism

Abstract

Based on the self-built corpus, Disgrace is compared with Coetzee’s other 11 novels with AntConc to generate keyword list and the data reveals that "dogs", as an important keyword, makes a great contribution to theme construction of Disgrace and has a relationship of co-occurrence and isomorphism with man. Dogs are the objects of Lurie’ gaze, and with anti-gaze, he achieves empathy between man and dogs, clarifies the identity of dogs as companion species of human beings, showing the isomorphism between them. Lurie’s becoming dog-man, which is, in essence, a kind of deterritorialization, breaking through the species boundary between humans and animals and demonstrates the animal rights.

References

[1] Dan Hansong. Encountering Dogs: On South African Animal Narrative in Coetzee’s Disgrace. Foreign Literature Review 2018; (03):166-193

[2] Coetzee, J. M. 2000. Disgrace. New York: Penguin Books

[3] Jiang Lifu. The Politics of the Animal: A Cultural Critique of the Postcolonial Animal Representation in Novels from The White Bone to The White Tiger. 2010. Nanjing University, PhD dissertation.

[4] About the author: Yongjin Wu(2000.07- ), male, born in Yongzhou, Hunan Province. He is an undergraduate at Hunan Normal University. His research interest is British and American literature.

[5] This paper is funded by Hunan Normal University undergraduates innovative experiment project and entrepreneurship program(2020121).

Published
2021-03-25